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Our Life | Наше життя December | Грудень 2020 3 Marianna Zajac REFLECTIONS FROM THE UNWLA PRESIDENT Christ Is Born! Let Us Glorify Him! May the true meaning of Christmas and the joy of Christ’s birth be in your family’s midst throughout this Holy Season! As we’ve lived through the spectrum of 2020 holidays during these challenging times, starting with Easter in April and finding ourselves at Christmastime now in December–January, it is not difficult to feel somewhat anxious or slightly depressed. If ever there were a year when people could use the comfort of a big holiday dinner, this is certainly it. Yet in 2020, a joyful, multigenerational meal around a crowded indoor dinner table is a potentially high-risk activity and will not happen for most of us. Rituals make these ordinary holidays extraordinary. For instance, a pumpkin pie eaten on a random day in October is just a pumpkin pie. But a pumpkin pie on the fourth Thursday of November is not just a pumpkin pie; it’s part of a Thanksgiving custom. A bowl of borshch eaten on a winter day is just a familiar bowl of soup. But a bowl of Christmas Eve borshch is so special, an integral part of our yearly Christmas Eve custom. Perhaps the key this year is to accept that, because of extraordinary circumstances, we might not be together physically – but we can still focus on our rich Ukrainian traditions, hold them close to our hearts, and share them virtually, if possible. The feast of St. Nicholas is a perfect example of tradition and also a thrilling time for our children or grandchildren. I invite you to read the touching St. Nicholas vignette authored by our Ukrainian editor, Larysa Topolia, on pages 32-33. This lovely story shares the lesson that we should treasure our family members rather than focusing on material “things” – a lesson often quoted but less frequently taken to heart. Sending a gift but, more importantly, spending time with our children/grandchildren, albeit virtually, might be a special holiday route. Also, each family has its very own traditions. These family traditions are repeated year after year, involving the whole family and actually strengthening family bonds (for instance, Christmas caroling together). Today’s technology can allow us to share this type of tradition virtually with our family, giving us all something to look forward to and to remember when the pandemic subsides. During my presidency (since 2008), I’ve had the wonderful honor and great pleasure to host three milestone UNWLA anniversaries. On October 9, 2010, we celebrated UNWLA’s 85th anniversary with an elegant gala event at The Ukrainian Museum in New York City, when A Candle in Remembrance , the English translation (funded by the UNWLA) of Professor Valentyna Borysenko’s Свіча пам’яті , was presented. On October 17, 2015, UNWLA’s 90th was held before a packed house at the Ukrainian National Home in New York City. Every Ukrainian organization in the tri-state area was represented and joined us that evening! On December 6 this year, the UNWLA hosted a virtual gala to celebrate its 95th year of community activity, using today’s technical lifelines – Zoom/GoToMeeting/ Skype – to do so. Having had to postpone UNWLA’s XXXII Convention because of the pandemic, it is valuable that technology will allow us to gather nevertheless to celebrate our accomplishments. We will recount this novel event’s presentations in the next issue of Our Life . As we inch towards UNWLA’s 100th anniversary, we continue to marvel at the intelligent, brave, creative, strong-willed women of foresight on whose shoulders we’ve built a pillar of our Ukrainian communities. May God keep you and your families under His protection during this Blessed Season!
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